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6.21.2006

Pay to play faster?

"Network neutrality"--or, more precisely, "Internet neutrality"--is perhaps the most prominent and contentious issue in Internet and telecommunications policy today.

Thus begins a paper issued by the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), "a public policy organization dedicated to promoting the democratic potential of today's open, decentralized global Internet." Net neutrality means equal access to the Internet, regardless of ability to pay more for greater bandwidth or high speed. In a press release yesterday, CDT announced the publication of this paper which calls for "legislation to preserve the essential neutrality and openness of the Internet, while leaving broadband network providers free to experiment with non-neutral arrangements elsewhere on their networks."

In the course of its study, CDT consulted with different stakeholders on this issue and commissioned a separate paper by Daniel Weitzner, who wrote:

Service-level pricing is widespread and is no threat to neutrality, provided each user (endpoint) on the network can chose [sic] the level of services appropriate to its needs and provided that many-to-many, end-to-end traffic flow remains possible.